The invention relates to power-line connected switching regulators, commonly known as off-line switching regulators. Ordinarily a full-wave bridge rectifier converts the a-c line voltage to pulsating dc which is partly filtered and then applied to a switching regulator that controls the energy fed into a transformer, the secondary of which supplies an a-c signal to a rectifier at a suitable voltage level. This a-c signal is rectified and applied to a filter capacitor that provide a d-c output. Since the switching regulator operates at a relatively high frequency, the transformer and filter capacitor components can be made very efficient and relatively small. Whereas, normal power supplies operate at 60 Hz for half wave off-line operation, and at 120 Hz for full wave operation, such frequencies require transformers having substantial sized iron cores and filter capacitors that are quite large, perhaps several thousand microfarads. When a switching regulator is made to operate at 600 KHz it can be seen that the filter capacitor size can be reduced by about four orders of magnitude over the 60 Hz case. The transformer iron core can similarly be reduced and small low-loss ferrite cores can be employed. Such power supplies commonly employ a timing oscillator that can either be synchronized or made a part of a phase locked loop (PLL) for control and stability. The timing oscillator is used to generate a ramp voltage that is compared with the rectified d-c supply output and the resultant information used to modulate the width of a pulse that is fed to a switch that controls the flow of energy to the power supply transformer. When the d-c output rises the regulator acts to reduce the switch duty cycle which acts to reduce the output. When the d-c output falls the regulator increases the duty cycle which raises the output. Thus a change in duty cycle at a constant frequency acts to regulate the d-c output. Such switching regulator circuits can become relatively complicated so that they are ordinarily in integrated circuit (IC) form. The IC must be supplied with a d-c voltage in order to operate and this commonly is achieved by powering the IC from the power supply d-c output. However, such circuits are not self starting, they must be started separately when first energized. This is typically done by connecting a resistor from the d-c output back to the d-c power line input. This resistor must conduct sufficient current to run the IC at the lowest line voltage. Thus, the resistor value is set. Then at the highest power line voltages the resistor must be capable of dissipating the required power so its power rating is set. These requirements result in a relatively low value resistor having a relatively high dissipation. In other words the resistor gets hot and a high wattage rating is involved. Any such power dissipated is wasted so such starting is regarded as undesirable.